Tag: Reading to Swindon

Please note that any letters received by us at Gay News are liable to be published unless you state otherwise.

First Class Male

Dear Gay News,

I am writing this short note to gay brothers and sisters everywhere, with small hope of change.

I am simply fucking fed up with being classed as a screaming queen. First of all, let me explain the cause of this letter. It is simply to say the queens who prance about, drag up, and fucking let down the gay side of life when they go to those stupid GLF marches ought to be shot. If only they would stop to think what a bloody fool they are making of themselves it might change their attitude.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am gay and jolly well proud of it. I am, needless to say, the normal gay. Get that folks, normals I dress normal, go to gay pubs and clubs etc, but I feel so ashamed when I see some of the pranks those queens get up to. So come on all you normal gays, there must be thousands around, put ink to paper and write to Gay News.

Isn’t there some sort of club or organisation we could all join apart from GLF etc. I do apologise if I have caused any ill feelings, but once again I got fed up with being classed as the queens who attend marches!!

Philip

PS These GLF marches etc are the only side of the gay life the public sees and we’ve got to be bloody well classed with them. Bloody cheek, if you ask me!!
PPS Gay News is great. Keep up the great work.

‘Go On Boys, Don’t Mind Me’

Dear Collective,
Michael Kaye’s little piece on ‘Coming Out’ (GN No 6) reminds me of an experience about ten years ago, when I was still a good little civil servant, I got into the Cheltenham train at Paddington one evening and found an empty compartment, in which I was joined by two railwaymen, evidently just off duty and still in their working gear. They were both nice-looking well-built chaps in their thirties, and I was struck by their rather pre-occupied manner. As the train neared Reading I became aware of the extreme intensity of the silence in our compartment and glanced up from my newspaper to see that they were both leaning forward with their knees wide apart, their elbows resting on their knees, and their hands clasped in front of them. (They were sitting side by side and I was sitting directly opposite them.) The right knee of the one was very firmly laid against the other’s left.

I was immediately paralysed with embarrassment.

I longed to say, ‘Go on boys, don’t mind me!’ but couldn’t have spoken to save my life. I thought of myself as they must have seen me, a very proper Establishment figure in my trilby and city overcoat, looming over them. I thought of moving to the other end of the compartment, to give them more privacy, but I felt I couldn’t do so without their interpreting my action as one of disgust. Instead, I buried my head in my newspaper, hoping that if I could be out of sight to them, I might also become out of mind. This lasted till Swindon, where they got out. As they stood up, one of them looked down at me over the top of my paper with an expression of mingled grief and hatred that I have never forgotten. Perhaps this was the first and last time in their lives that they could be together, and by my presence I had spoilt it for them.

Well now, boys and girls, the moral of this little anecdote is as follows: that respectable citizen who seem momentarily such a blot on you and your lover’s landscape — give him the benefit of the doubt. He may be really on your side. He may be rejoicing in your mutual happiness and anxious to encourage you, but too shy to say so, too scared of seeming intrusive.